Free Trust No One by Diana Layne Page B

does your garden grow? With thorns so–”
    “What the hell?”
    “Hush, I’m creating here.”
    “Creating what?”
    “A nursery rhyme, keeping with the spirit of the evening.”
    She frowned. “No one calls me Mar–”
    “Shh. I think I have the ending. With thorns so sharp—that’s a play on your last name as well, Thornberg, get it?” Not letting her make a comment on his brilliance, which from the look in her eye wouldn’t be anything positive, he continued, “With thorns so sharp, they’ll pierce your heart and blood flows from the hole.” He smiled, knowing she’d like to pierce him with more than thorns.
    “Cute,” she said in a tone that conveyed the opposite.
    “I thought so. And quite accurate. You are quite thorny.”
    “Only with people who barge in and bug me. And as for your attempt at being creative—call me Mary again and I’ll cut out your tongue.”
    He ignored her tone and grinned. “But the name works so well with the rhyme.”
    “I am so not amused.”
    He pulled in his smile. “I didn’t think you would be. So let’s move to the reason I came. Tasha.”
    “That’s even less amusing.”
    “Faster we talk about her, faster I leave.”
    “Now that’s tempting. Why don’t I believe it? Maybe since we’ve already talked about her? Can’t see anything else I have to say. I don’t know where she is. We don’t keep in touch. Period.”
    “But you know where she’d likely go?”
    “Nope. I’d say try Ed’s wife, but I don’t think they were especially close either. Tasha kept to herself. I was much closer to her brother. Why don’t you go bug him?”
    “Can’t. He’s disappeared.”
    “What do you mean disappeared?”
    “Disappeared as in we can’t find him either.”
    “Was he on an assignment?”
    “Nope. Both he and Tasha took some personal time.”
    “So why aren’t you looking at him as the suspect?”
    “We didn’t think he’d have sex with the senators before he whacked them.”
    “Sex?”
    “Some of the conditions of the senators, naked and in bed, suggested they’d had sex and maybe died of a heart attack.”
    “You have reason to believe it wasn’t a heart attack?”
    “From what I understand, yes.”
    “But you said the crime scenes were clean?”
    “We know how to do that in this business, MJ.”
    “So you’re moving forward on someone’s hunch?”
    “Hunches have proved right in my past, how about yours?”
    She nodded, scraped the last of the pie off her plate. “You think Niko is helping?”
    “The last we traced him, he left the country for Russia. And then he disappeared. It’s possible he snuck back into the states with another passport, or came in through the border, but evidence is pointing more toward him being in Siberia.”
    “Siberia? As in prison?”
    He only nodded.
    The news hit MJ hard, though Ben could tell she tried to hide it. She stared at the muted television as commercials and the news program flashed by with a look that suggested her attention was far away.
    “You don’t have other family do you?” he asked.
    “Niko and Tasha aren’t related to me, we were just . . . raised by the same person.”
    “But you lived together long enough to feel like a family?”
    “Our upbringing in Ed’s household wasn’t exactly traditional.”
    Considering who Ed had been, Ben could understand.
    “But I have Angel now, and she’ll have a normal childhood. One like I should have had.” MJ seemed to have slipped into a reflective mood.
    “Helping us find Tasha isn’t going to prevent Angelina from having a normal childhood.”
    “There’s no helping to it. I don’t know where she is.”
    “Are you being deliberately obtuse?”
    “What?” She turned to him and frowned, and it was if a light turned on when her eyes widened. “Jeff wants me to find her? I’m not in the business now. No way.” She shook her head, clamped her mouth in a tight line and stared back at the television.
    The flashing pictures